You forgot to mention that they violently took an empty house no one used but the owner wanted it to be empty
As much as I agree that “civilized society” spouted by right-wingers is awfully damn far from it it seems kinda weird to act like anarchy would bring about a structured society.
All large groups who don’t want to end up falling into disparate groups led by the nearest psychopath and trauma-fueled meat-heads are going to need structure. Yes, capitalism and the right in general have failed but that doesn’t mean government is bad(or even difficult).
Anarchism isn’t the absence of structure but the absence of hierarchy. The most basic idea of anarchist decision making is a council free for everyone to join that tries to find consensus.
Anarchists aren’t against all government at all cost, but about having the bare minimum authority to do so. It is about not enshrining positions of power that those psychopaths then go on to seek and jerrymander in to place. It is about creating structures where no one is actually above others even if they’re deciding some things for others.
Like how most people trust a good tradesman to do their job and don’t dictate the trade to the tradesman (the ones that want a good job done anyways!). Everything requires a minimum of trust. Would you let a plumber in to your home you don’t trust? Why do we allow police and politicians that few trust?
That’s not anarchy, that’s just wanting a different system of government but expecting it to come with dramatic fanfare and the naive trust that good people will fill the power vacuums. It takes work, and that’s hard, but that’s the only way it’s going to work.
And you’re right, why do we allow it? We could vote for better people, obviously, but we don’t. Many people have been working on this problem for a long time.
We will always fall back to a government system of some kind. You can tear down the current one and pretend that the job will be done or you can actually work to make the stupid thing work.
Anarchism is a diverse political movement with many strains of thought and centuries of theory and attempts to implement it. Lemmy isn’t going to teach you nearly as much about it as Peter Kropotkin or any of the anarchist led organizations and movements out there. We aren’t naive idealists, we run organizations much more frequently than state communists actually. We fight fascists. We’re probably actually the healthiest far left movement when it comes to actually doing shit in America. You just don’t see it because it’s easy to miss that a good giveaway or a books to prisoners program or a bike co-op is anarchist.
it seems kinda weird to act like anarchy would bring about a structured society
This isn’t exactly what the comic portrays though. If you’re thinking of “anarchy” as being the absence of government, it isn’t anarchy itself that would lead to a structured society, it’s the intentional efforts of people to build a society sans government that is structured on things other than property and institutional violence.
The idea of government does not require property and institutional violence. If that’s where we’re starting from then there’s not going to be much of a conversation to be had.
Why not? It sounds like you have a specific idea of what these words mean to you, but if those are very different from what people identifying as anarchists are talking about, it doesn’t seem like there is much point objecting on the basis of your preferred definitions, that’s basically just a strawman argument.
To me this shows the problem with anarchism. It’s a reason anarchism is the somewhat acceptable protestation. In the mean time others are working on actually takeover use the No1 weapon avvailable, the state. /Anarchist in the street, ML in the sheets
The state is a corrupting force. It’s using the ring to fight Sauron. You can use it at times, but to seize it or accept its right to exist even temporarily gives room for those interested in power to seize your movement and they will never let go. Add in power corrupting even the good and you’ve got problems brewing.
We will be as the weeds. And we will fill the holes an unjust society leaves, cracking the concrete and overrunning their manicured lawns. A decentralized movement cannot be extinguished without removing the conditions that allow it to thrive. It cannot be subverted or taken over. It has its weaknesses, but I don’t trust the people’s stick to beat my neighbors either.
Making my point. That’s the think that’s creates smelly hippies . The opposite is what actually create socialist states. . The people’s stick will beat deadbeats and I’m happy with that. Liberalism is perhaps the ideology you are looking for?
Ohhhhhhh, you stand in the front this revolution, we’re done standing between you and the fascists. May you suffer the world you seek to create.
What?
I’m 13 and this is deep.
Those aren’t anarchists, they’re synarchists.
The things they do like pooling resources require governing over. Governing.
Just do a simple fucking web search before you comment, this is embarassing.
I skimmed the article and it does seem to agree with the comment you responded to, no? Genuinely asking, I don’t know anything about this.
Anarchism is against hierarchy and for horizontal organization. Not disorder. In the comic these are anarchists (they are punk rock representations of 1800s anarchist philosophers Bakunin, Kropotkin and Proudhon) and they are acting according to the principles of anarchism, as anarchists do irl.
“Governing over something” is not the core of the issue that anarchism is against. It’s hierarchy. You can have a horizontally, democratically organized collective “govern over”, or in other words manage something. They will just do it through collective decision making with no rulers or subordinates.
OP here is trying to invent a new word for what they see in the comic because they don’t understand what anarchism means.
Anarchism is against hierarchy and for horizontal organization. Not disorder. In the comic these are anarchists (they are punk rock representations of 1800s anarchist philosophers Bakunin, Kropotkin and Proudhon) and they are acting according to the principles of anarchism, as anarchists do irl.
You people really should read up on the ideologies you think you support.
From the link that the earlier user politely provided.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions
All forms of authority.
Synarchism generally means “joint rule” or “harmonious rule”.
They will just do it through collective decision making with no rulers or subordinates.
Ah, so for every single decision, everyone has to gather up and vote? Okay, then you can’t have a society as big as in the comic, because everyone would waste the time required to actually produce shit to sit voting on things that don’t matter. And what if they disagree? Who solves it? Who enforces the will of the majority when people disagree on these futile votes?
Nah, for a society larger than a family, there’s going to be persons responsible for dealing with that. Ie appointed people who will govern a matter. Hmm I wonder what a person like that could be called…
Read even basic philosophy, Rousseau, Hobbes, anything. Just churlish suppositions you make, imo.
fucking hobbes and rousseau lol nah fam been there done that it was part of my school curiculum the problem with the definition of anarchist lies in the fact that anarchy as an idea was always horizontal government structure built on decentralised syndicates and communes but the propaganda term and non political term of lack of order is now commonly accepted as the new definition i suggest you read up on some history and look at the beginning phases of the industrial era
anarchy as an idea was always horizontal government structure built on decentralised syndicates and communes
ZzzZZZzzzZzzZzzzz
Your ancient Greek sucks, bruv.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/anarchy#etymonline_v_13397
1530s, “absence of government,” from French anarchie or directly from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia “lack of a leader, the state of people without a government” (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon), abstract noun from anarkhos “rulerless,” from an- “without” (see an- (1)) + arkhos “leader” (see archon).
Bro still can’t grasp that words can have more than one meaning
real mature there bruv
You’re doing the equivalent of saying the satanic temple worships the devil
Not really, no.
More like arguing that Satan is a central figure for LaVeyan satanism, ie The Church of Satan (Satanic Temple is the more… rational one of the two, although both value reason.)
And while neither believe in an actual Satan in the Christian sense, they do value him as a symbolic adversary.
So it definitely wouldn’t be wrong to say that the Church of Satan has people who “worship” Satan.
Nice try but no dice. Also, theology is far less objective than “what is the prescriptive meaning of anarchy” which isn’t s terribly hard question to answer.
A philosophical movement is defined by its philosophy and followers not by the word it calls itself.
Yeah, it really is.
Let’s use your link, if that’s the level of discussion you’re on.
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions
Literally the first sentence.
These people demonstrate a community so large that pooling the resources will surely be written down. That or it won’t work like in the comic. Thus they’ll end up making the very same institutions they claim to abolish.
These are a minimally governed commune. Minarchy, synarchy, but not anarchy.
Quite embarrassing indeed.
that depends on which definition you go off of tho idk about their link but in the begginnings of the industrial age anarchism was redefined for propaganda use and didnt actually mean the complete eradication of government but instead the creation of syndicates and communes
The actual prescriptive definition, not some vague colloquial use that goes against the prescriptive meaning of the word.
Oh syndicates you say? Huh. That word has the same beginning as the word “synarchy”, doesn’t it? Followed by “-archy”, denoting “rule of”. Huh. I wonder why I chose the word “synarchy”. It’s a mystery, it seems.
yea well words tend to have multiple definitions and arent just latin afterall we are writing english not latin right?
“Anarchy” is pretty directly from Greek through Latin.
Yes English has a lot of loanwords and they don’t always use the prescriptive meaning, and sometimes evolve. Like “English”. The language of the people of Angle-Land. Englaland (old English for England), if you will.
I think this is still fairly known despite having few to none practical applications.
That is still a proper noun though.
We’re talking about Greek and Latin words we use precisely because of their prescriptive meaning.
“Democracy” is still the rule of the people, despite “Democrat” being a party alignment in the US, and thus obviously having more meanings than the basic prescriptive meaning, but I think we can still agree that the word indeed means “the [common] people’s rule”.
So do other words we picked up exactly because of their prescriptive meaning keep their meanings as well.
Like synarchy, minarchy and anarchy.
Colloquially anarchists have switched to supporting minarchy, because it’s very evident to anyone that even a small society will need governing in some form, to function. So it wouldn’t be wrong to say that modern anarchism isn’t actually anarchy, but minarchic synarchism, just like I described.
bro homophobia isnt fear or aversion just because it ends on phobia (phóbos) tho chief
Meanwhile actual anarchists: “I’m bigger than you so your loved ones are now my sex slaves”
Jesse, what the fuck are you talking about?
I think they meant to ask “in an anarchic society, who enforces rights in the absence of the state?”
Also I’ll second that motion because I honestly know next to nothing about anarchy.
I love how you have the decency to frame it as a lack of understanding on your side. If you’re interested, I can look up entry level material about that question tomorrow or the day after for you.
Yeah I’ve seen too many “just asking questions” types so I absolutely don’t want to be seen as doing that. I have a basic concept of anarchy but that’s all. And that’d be cool, drop a reply here or dm.
Glad to be of help! I think it’s better to do it here so other people might find it as well.
A very resourceful channel is Anark. Maybe his “mini series” Listen, Liberals and Listen, Conservatives is a good starting point or Why we must destroy the state. He also has a series about Liberation in Action. More to the point of your question might be a video by another resourceful channel Andrewism called We Need To Rethink Justice.
I hope this is still entry level. It might be too much but you don’t have to watch everything but once you did, you will find more videos about this topic.
My understanding is that anarchy isn’t about the lack of any authority, it’s the lack of unearned authority or unearned authoritative hierarchy. If the members of a community choose to use a democratic process to elect individuals to hold some specific authority for an amount of time that doesn’t stop being anarchy. It stops being anarchy when individuals capture or hold authority not granted by a dictate from the community. There are some issues with how a species like humanity could be governed under anarchy, but enforcing rights isn’t a necessary problem.
I thought absence of a state was kind of core to anarchy. Wouldn’t any sort of elected official or rights enforcing body be the de facto state regardless of how you frame it?
Though, I’m not trying to debate, just trying to grasp the concept, so if y’all have something like an anarchist pamphlet I’ll be glad to take that and go lol. Longer literature is fine but no promises on when it’ll get read.
Anarchist here. I recommend the Anarchist FAQ. for an extensive and well sourced answer.
Yeah no sweat I’m not an authority on anarchy if you’ll excuse the pun and https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anarchism/ is probably going to be a better source
I think the biggest difference between what I was describing and a state is the individuals elected are not part of any governing body or political party and are granted authority by a community for a specific purpose/job.
In general and broadly somewhere between ‘that’s Diane we elected her during the last community meeting to take care of the roads for the next 5 years based on community funds because she’s got some good ideas on how to do that we mostly agree on’ and ‘the person you elected is a member of a governing body representing a political party following a bureaucracy of processes and they’re in charge of police, education, roads, etc so if you want anything done get your wallet ready for lobbying and if you try to fix that pothole yourself it’s illegal’ a line is crossed.
In an anarchist ideal society everyone would get along and it would be butterflies and gumdrops. But in reality the person with the bigger stick will simply take what they want and everyone will just say “hey stop that” and then get shot in the face. Naivety: political edition.
Which anarchist said everyone had to get along? You’re building a straw man nobody is actually advocating for.
If you need an example of how a system of agreement across large groups that sometimes violently disagree can work without any governing body see bitcoin and the block chain ledger it maintains. You don’t need 100% agreement to maintain the integrity of the ledger, just 51%.
I do not want my society to be run on the tenets of cryptocurrency and I don’t see how it’s a good comparison anyway.
Hey thanks for completely missing the point
Who do you think keeps getting into street fights with fascists? Like anarchists are notoriously willing to engage in political violence against oppressors. For fucks sake we had an army in the Russian revolution and we poured in from around the world to shoot at Francoists.
Which anarchist said that?
Slavery is like the opposite of anarchism
If only
Those are fundamental theorists of anarchism. Who can be called more of an actual anarchist than the guy who coined the term in modern day and the prince who abdicated to join the Russian revolution under the name of anarchism and wrote the basic texts of modern anarchy?
Want to know who will stop the bigger person from doing that? Three people teamed up with clubs.
Ah yes that went so well for us historically.
It really depends on what you mean by historically. Have you read worshipping power or any other book on early state formation? Or are you talking out your ass?
